Grinder knives/plates and wellsaw blades sharpened?

[GWG8541]

lamurscrappy I am tagging Jonathon and Austin so they will see this quicker.

[Tex_77]

lamurscrappy just curious what social media you are on that you are seeing these questions being asked?

Also if Jon or Austin don’t respond, just call into customer service and they can provide you an answer to those questions.

[processhead]

lamurscrappy
Like Tex_77 mentions, contact customer service. The Walton’s web site doesn’t explicitly mention sharpening services for plates and knives until you look at their Everlast grinder parts product line.
At that point they say you can return plates and knives to Walton’s for resharpening.
It’s worth mentioning that not all knives and plates can be resharpened, so knowing what kind of knives and plates you have is important. Most plates and knives are stamped with manufacturer info. so have that ready when you speak with customer service.

[Lance]

carisoloinc.com
Check these guys out they do a good job and have a great service.

[lamurscrappy]

Facebook mainly. Theres a lot of different groups that talk about meat cutting/butchering.

[Jonathon]

lamurscrappy Thanks, we will check this out, we have had an auto-response up telling people to either come here or call customer service as we don’t currently have time to answer all social media questions. However, that might have to change.

[Skinny]

The sausage maker has a plate and knife stone kit you put in your grinder with the plate or knife depending on which you are sharpening. It did work but it is a stone and can break which is what happened to me My family has been processing our own meats for years and my dad showed us you can put your plat or knife on fine sandpaper on a flat surface and work them on the sandpaper. I have done it for years and it works good. Some may say this is not a good practice but if you only have dull plates/knives and buying new what do you have to loose??

[Jonathon]

Skinny We actually tried one of those and one of the major issues we had was with the plate not getting to the edges. Seemed like a good idea but in the end doesn’t work as well as hoped. Sandpaper might be a better experiment. I wonder if a mouse sander would work at all? It’d have to be pretty fine grit to not ruin the plate, and then I imagine that would eat the sandpaper pretty fast. Still, interesting idea.

[processhead]

I believe the guys who sharpen plates professionally use a surface grinder. A surface grinder is a precision tool that removes material from the entire surface of the grinder plate and basically returns it to “as new” condition. There are probably some limits to how many times a plate can be ground since eventually it will be too thin to fit tightly with the knife and the grinder body.

[glen]

Assuming they are true in the first place
One thing to be aware of is the actual part of the cutting blade and plate that need trueing is probably just a few microns
I did mine once with a fine wet/dry abrasive sheet on a very flat, hard surface (glass) with water to lube and provide particle suspension
Moved the blade and plate in a figure 8 motion (evens out the pressure better) with a 1/4 turn every 20 laps
If your abrasive sheet is turning dark you are removing metal
Hard to tell how much it helped but seemed sharper and the wear pattern on my plates are much better than before

[johnsbrewhouse]

You can use a lapping plate and diamond paste as well. I have done mine on an Arkansas wet stone. Lapping plates and diamond paste are used when sharpening fine chisels and blades for planes.

[Jonathon]

processhead Yeah, we have one, we did a post on it a while back on how we do it. I should probably do some social media posts on that post but…I just have no energy to engage on social media anymore. I’d far rather spend my time on here instead, but we don’t always get EVERYTHING we want https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/258/extending-the-life-of-your-grinder-plates-and-knives

Yes, the limits on sharpening are based on the thickness for the plate and the thickness of the insert of the blade section for the knive.

glen is correct on the very small amount that needs to be sharp on the knife, you only need to sharpen the leading edge, after that, it should drop off so only the leading edge comes in contact with the plate.

johnsbrewhouse Do you feel like you get it back to “as new” or close to with that method?

[johnsbrewhouse]

Jonathon Haven’t bought a knife blade yet, or a plate. I learned to lap things a long time ago. We used to use lapping blocks to recondition parts in diesel fuel injectors. It is very effective, you are really just flattening out the steel and putting an edge back on the blade just like sharpening a knife. When you lap the plate you are taking the scratches and groves out. I believe it works as well as grinding and makes them last longer.